Zoe Casselman / The Hofstra Chronicle

My sister and I are attached at the hip. It doesn’t matter that we’re both adults now, me being 21 and her almost 19, and it especially doesn’t matter that she’s in Ohio and I’m in New York. Even though we are 696 miles apart (I checked), we are – and will always be – inseparable.

We feel the distance, definitely, and that is often reflected in our near-daily “I miss you so much” or “I wish you were here” texts. While we don’t lament about the absence all the time, we do text, call and talk pretty much all day, every single day, without fail. If I’m texting someone, chances are it’s my sister on the other end.

Morgan is undoubtedly my best friend. We have nearly two decades of inside jokes, commentary, and secret, silent understanding. She can see an expression cross my face for no more than a second and know exactly what I’m feeling and exactly what to say. I have never been more in tune with another person.

We didn’t come out of the womb this close, however. From birth until about elementary school, all we would do was fight. I can’t even remember how many time-outs I got in for provoking my sister, much less how many times I was in the proverbial slammer for starting a physical altercation with her.

We would go hand-to-hand like the living room was a boxing ring. Biting, kicking, hair pulling and screaming were all fair game. Morgan had a special move she titled “the windmill,” where she would lay on her back and kick her feet in the air like a bicycle trying to fend off my incoming attacks. It always worked, and I usually got a foot to the face.

I remember how desperate our parents were to make us be nice to each other. Once, my dad called a family meeting (something he had never done before) to sit my sister and I down to explain why we should be close and not constantly in combat.

“You’re her big sister,” I remember him telling me, gently grabbing my small hands in his. “You’re supposed to watch out for her, make sure she’s okay. You’re supposed to protect her. It should be the two of you versus everyone else, not each other.” He was right.

The message and all of its weight didn’t immediately stick, but it at least got me thinking. It took a while, but slowly, fights turned into play, and play turned into talking and talking turned into friendship.

We started having “sleepovers,” where, despite usually only being separated by a thin, thin wall, we would pick one of our rooms and both of us would pile into the bed and play games until we passed out. Then, when we weren’t having sleepovers, we would knock on the wall between us in various complicated patterns, repeating them exactly over and over until somebody messed up. Then we would just laugh through the wall and start all over until someone would inevitably yell “Be quiet! It’s late!” – to that we’d just laugh more.

Through the angst of middle school and the melodrama of high school, Morgan was a constant. That period of time was hard. Extremely hard. Between growing pains, plunges in mental health and eventually the pandemic, I felt lost – I was actively losing myself. I was always angry and combative, volatile and depressed. I shut myself in my room and began to let the days wash over me, living through them, but never in them. I was a shell.

Despite this, Morgan would knock on my bedroom door every single day. It started out with little excuses to get me out of bed, like making food or asking if I wanted to go on a short walk. Slowly, it began to work. I started leaving my room more and more, solely to hang out with her, the only friend I had in person during quarantine.

Even when I didn’t leave my room, she would knock and wordlessly come in to lay at the end of my bed and keep me company, something she still does now whenever we’re both home.

After the restrictions started to lift and we could start to return to the outside world, our closeness didn’t subside. We began hanging out every day, and if not that, texting about our separate days. This continued all through the summer before my freshman year of college, and then it was time for me to pack up and go.

We sobbed for days as I packed and prepared. Leaving my home, my family and my sister was one of the hardest things I have ever done. She and I had been through so much together that it really was like I was abandoning my best friend.

When it came time to finally leave my house and drive the 12 hours to New York, we hugged and cried for no less than 15 minutes, saying goodbye and then deciding that that wasn’t long enough, and hugging and crying and saying goodbye all over again. I cried while my dad and I drove, only stopping after I wore myself out enough to fall asleep.

I was scared to leave behind all I had ever known for something entirely new without knowing if it was worth it. She texted me the whole drive there, giving hourly updates on how much she missed me and already couldn’t wait for winter break.

During breaks and whenever I’m home, we go right back to hanging out all the time. Whenever we’re free, we go right back to knocking on each other’s doors, sitting in each other’s beds and keeping each other company.

Even now that I am well acclimated to college and love the life I have made for myself here, Morgan is still part of my every day. She is in college now, too, and often busy herself, but from good morning to good night, we still keep each other updated. Even when we’re both out of college and thrust into the real adult world, I know we’ll do the same. We’re inseparable.